The primary and most reliable means of forensic identification are fingerprints, comparative dental analysis, and DNA analysis. However, the application of these methods fails when there is not enough ante-mortem (AM) or post-mortem (PM) information either due to unavailability of appropriate reference samples or to the degraded condition of the remains. Skeleton-based forensic identification (SFI) techniques become a sound alternative because the skeleton usually survives both natural and non-natural decomposition processes. Within SFI, some of the most important techniques are craniofacial superimposition (CFS) and comparative radiography (CR). CFS aims to overlay a skull with some AM images of a candidate in order to determine if they correspond to the same person. CR considers the comparison of AM and PM other bones and cavities (skull frontal sinuses, clavicles, patellas, ...) which have been reported as useful for positive identification based on their individuality and uniqueness. Although these SFI techniques have been widely used, there are not common methodologies accepted worldwide. Instead, each forensic anthropologist applies a specific approach considering her expert knowledge and the available technologies. Hence, there is a strong interest in designing systematic and automatic methods to support the forensic anthropologist to apply both CFS and CR, avoiding the use of subjective, error-prone, and time-consuming manual procedures. The use of computational intelligence (evolutionary algorithms and fuzzy sets) and computer vision (3D-2D image registration and image processing) is a natural way to achieve this aim. This talk is devoted to present an intelligent system for CFS developed in collaboration with the University of Granada's Physical Anthropology Lab within a twelve year long research project. The resulting system is protected by an international patent and is currently under commercialization in Mexico. The results obtained in several real-world cases solved by the Lab in cooperation with the Spanish Scientific Police will be reported. In addition, a recent proposal of a computeraided CR paradigm based on the 3D bone scan-2D radiograph superimposition process of any bone or cavity will also be introduced.
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